


I have loved since you.  But when the new paint gets scratched, there you are underneath

by thecanary



Series: A Softer DeadPoetsSociety [6]
Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, just kinda sad mess, mentions of neils death kinda?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 12:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16702495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecanary/pseuds/thecanary
Summary: (My heart is layers of scar.)todd tries to love after neil, he really does





	I have loved since you.  But when the new paint gets scratched, there you are underneath

Todd’s first love was Neil. 

Neil was Todd’s first love. 

There was no other way of saying it. Neil was everything to Todd, a year of sharing a room together equating to the most meaningful relationship he’d had in his life. He moved on eventually, or at least he told himself he had. As he moved through college, making new friends and faking interest in the right girls, Todd told himself that whatever he’d felt for Neil was a fluke, a strike of luck he’d never have again. 

All that changed when part way through his degree - that was slowly switching from the maths and science courses that his father wanted from him and toward the English and creative subjects that made him happy, that he knew would make Neil proud - he met someone who was different. He didn’t want to compare the new guy to Neil just on virtue of him being an actor, but there was something beyond that, something about how the man made him feel that seemed reminiscent. Todd was calling himself a man now too, once he’d hit twenty years old it felt silly to still think of himself as a boy, as the young kid he once was before he became so disenchanted with the world. 

“Hey, Todd,” Michael said. It was after a class they shared, studying plays. Todd wanted to learn how to write better, to capture a story in playwriting as he could so easily capture a feeling in his poetry, and the new man was an actor, improving on his art. “Want to get a coffee after this?”

What happened after that was a whirlwind forbidden romance, that felt just as illicit as every moment in the cave with the dead poets; intoxicating and beautiful, something the world wouldn’t understand, but Todd was living for it, embracing a chance to do something wrong that made him feel so good. 

They loved each other. Todd was surprised to think it, as he woke up every morning looking forward to seeing his lover’s face, as he came to expect goodnight kisses, away from where the eyes of the world would judge. Some days it made him sad, it made him feel like his soul was ripping itself to shreds at the thought that this, this is what he deserved with Neil, he was having the life that Neil deserved to have with him, and he couldn’t stand it. 

“I don’t get it, Todd! Am I not good enough?”  
“You are, you are. It’s just -”  
“I know. It’s just Neil is your one and only. And being with me is betraying him.”

Todd couldn’t reply to that. 

“Todd, just, don’t try to help your dead boyfriend live vicariously through me. I’m not… this isn’t a game for me. Come back when you can see me as someone who is something other than ‘not Neil’.”

Todd never went back. 

It hurt, it ached to realise that the year spent writing poetry and laughing and kissing and ruining their lives was nothing but Todd pretending it was something different altogether. But it had to happen. Todd spent hours that month at Neil’s gravestone - he’d never moved too far from town, and it wasn’t hard to get a bus to the cemetery after classes and then take the late bus back to the college dorms, or stay in the cemetery overnight, lying next to Neil’s plot and whispering himself to sleep with promises that he’d live his life better, and then wake up in the morning, and bus back to college, showing up to class in dishevelled clothes that earned nothing more than a few confused looks and laughs that didn’t understand the situation. 

His next love was different. An older man, though not by much, he was finishing his PhD the same year Todd was finishing his degree. It was more careful, less head over heels than with Michael, but Todd recognised the feeling. The feeling of his stomach sinking and his chest grew tight, and he could do nothing but smile incredulously every time the man spoke. 

“Am I your first?” he asked Todd one night.  
“First what?”  
“First in bed?”  
“Like, this?” Todd clarified. “Yes.”  
“First kiss?”  
“No.”  
“Who was?”  
“Guy I met my second year, Michael. Who was yours?”  
“A girl from high school. Was Michael your first love?”

Todd could only laugh a little at that, weak and pained. “No,” he shook his head slowly. “That was Neil.”  
“Who was he?”  
“My roommate, senior year of high school. I wouldn’t be who I am without him.”  
“Did he move away?”  
“Died.”

That put a pause into the conversation. 

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said, putting a reassuring hand on Todd’s shoulder.  
“It’s okay. It was a while ago.”  
“But you’re not over it.”

Todd shook his head. “Don’t think I ever will be.”

“I know the feeling,” was the slow reply he got. 

Todd’s life went on, and he loved and loved and never stopped loving Neil. And he lost and he never stopped feeling like he’d lost Neil. Every time he lost someone - and after a while it felt like all he was doing was losing people - it was just like losing Neil all over again. 

It hurt.


End file.
